Rose with Harm

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize: 

Heartbreaking detail permeates Hardisty's deftly musical debut. These are love poems, conjuring relationships just beginning, gone astray, turned wrong, or fading from view. The reader is on tour through love's phantasy, a parade of fragments in lost rooms all set within time slips that draw us back and forth across countries and continents – and in dreams that rise and coalesce around absence. Written over a decade, these tightly-accomplished lyrics will delight those familiar with Hardisty's writing and find a wide new readership for those yet to discover this important new writer.

This long-awaited debut from Daniel Hardisty shows off his exceptional lyric gifts to thrilling effect. Poised and poignant, Hardisty’s confessional poems offer love’s realisations, threats and transgressions. The poet is often caught travelling – remote and removed from his environments, as the poems capture concrete moments of transition with bittersweet backstories of love, regret, suspense and loss. Sure to receive wide critical praise.

Praise for this Book

‘I admire not only the rhythms… but also the shrewd, touching syntactical placements… these matters of harmony and melody give the emotion its breath and its bite.’ —Robert Pinsky

‘A really beautiful and mature collection… the voice is true, smart, brave, melancholy—and original.’ —Gail Mazur

‘Displaying his considerable lyric gifts, Daniel Hardisty’s poems are steeped in a tone of authoritative maturity. Dramatizing love’s vagaries in crisp, clear, effortless-seeming verse, this wise work is exquisitely made.’ —Jacob Polley, Northern Writer’s Awards